


Subject 721 (not just a number)

by Someone_aka_Me



Series: Soulmate AUs [20]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Wings, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Science, also magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 14:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15910245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Someone_aka_Me/pseuds/Someone_aka_Me
Summary: For the first four years of his life, Piers is referred to strictly as subject 721 — the success. A miracle of genetic editing. From his back grow a pair of pitch black, fully formed wings. What follows is an escape in the night, a found family, an unlikely friendship, a soulmate, and another capture. But hey, at least his life is never boring.





	Subject 721 (not just a number)

Piers is four years old when Max decides that he can't do this anymore.

He can't be a part of this.

Max looks at him, this four year old boy who sleeps in a barren room on white sheets and hasn't taken a breath of fresh air since he entered the compound three years ago.

Max took this job because it was advertised as ground breaking science. He'd been coming off a postdoc position in zebrafish genetics, debating whether or not he wanted to move into industry, when he'd seen the ad. A chance to work on human genetics. He'd figured it would be clinical trials for some sort of gene therapy.

And sure, the non-disclosure agreements were a little more intense than was standard, but that wasn't all that surprising for something this cutting edge.

He'd started on little stuff, running samples, PCR after PCR, and he'd felt like a glorified tech.

It had taken him nearly a year to work his way up to patient contact.

He hadn't expected what he'd found.

He'd been picturing an outpatient clinic. He'd been picturing consultations, seeking out people with monogenic disorders.

He hadn't expected children in bleak rooms with observation windows. He hadn't expected a little girl with three arms breathing heavily in a corner, a little boy with his heart beating outside his rib cage, a girl with legs webbed together.

Max holds in his horror, keeps his face blank, nods thoughtfully as his superior walks him through the halls.

He goes home that night and he cries and he cries and he cries.

This isn't what he wanted. God, he can't believe anyone would be a part of this. It violates everything he's ever been taught about responsible conduct of research, it's a terrible violation of informed consent, and it's  _cruel_. They're  _children_.

How can he be a part of this?

He thinks about the non-disclosure agreement he signed. If he tells anyone about this, he can be fined for everything he owns and imprisoned for decades. And no one will ever employ him again.

But they're  _children_.

He hasn't made up his mind about what he's going to do, so he goes into work anyway.

Within a week, he watches the little boy whose heart beats outside of his rib cage waste away and die.

They teach him how to document it. How to file paperwork about the cause of death for a three-month-old boy who grew up alone in a room, untouched. Who died alone. Because of something they did.

A month later, he meets a little boy who's older than the rest. Who's more stable.

Subject 721 (and it  _terrifies_  Max that the numbers go that high) is not dying. Unlike the rest of them.

Instead, he has a pair of perfectly formed, tiny black wings jutting out of his back. They aren't enough to support him, but they're feathered and beautiful and Max stares at him in awe.

"Gorgeous, isn't he?" his supervisor asks. "He's our best success. Not one like him, before or after. We can't figure out why he was different."

Max looks at the little boy. He can see the puncture marks on his arms from where they've drawn his blood over and over and over.

He is four years old, and he is as quiet as a mouse, laying on his side so that he doesn't crush his wings.

Max can't stop looking at his face.

There is no hope in it.

And Max can't do this anymore.

He doesn't do it impulsively. He plans it out. He has a strategy. He makes sure his paperwork is in order — all of the evidence they have handed him, all of the samples that he can carry with him.

He works late one night, starts a massive batch of Western Blots after lunch on purpose, lets them run late.

And when the labs have emptied and only the night guards are left, he makes his way into the patient corridors and swipes his ID. They'll know it's him anyway. There's no point in being secretive.

He picks subject 721 up carefully, with gentle hands.

The boy does not react but to turn his face slowly toward Max and stares at him with bright blue eyes.

Max doesn't know how to raise a kid, but he knows he can do better than this.

He takes subject 721 and he vanishes into the night, leaving the samples and all the evidence that he's compiled in the hands of the government. He hopes the whole place goes down, but honestly, his priority is this little boy.

…

Max names him Piers.

Piers has jet black hair that matches his wings. He has lithe limbs and slim wrists and he's so much lighter than he looks. The genetic editing goes further than the surface.

Max reads his file over and over and over.

As far as he can tell, Piers  _should_  be okay. But it's unprecedented. There is no one like Piers.

Max teaches him to hide his wings when they're not at him.

But Max also teaches him how to laugh. And how to stop cringing away from Max every time he moves toward him.

Max teaches him that not all touch is pain.

For the first month, every night after he puts Piers to bed, Max cries himself to sleep, thinking about the little boy in the other room who doesn't know what a hug is.

…

Max never expected to be a single parent at age 28. He never expected to be on the run from an old job and the law.

He moves continents, studies video after video to teach himself the accent, blends right in in suburban Surrey. Piers' wings grow bigger and bigger and bigger. They don't hide behind baggy shirts anymore.

Max can't enrol him in school, but he also can't just keep him inside all day.

He gets them fake ID. Max and Piers Polkiss. He files all the paperwork to homeschool Piers.

He teaches Piers to wrap his wings in pale flesh coloured bandages. When he wears a baggy shirt, he looks like he has a hunchback, and when he wears the bandages for more than an hour, the skin of his back looks red and pinched.

Max doesn't know what the right thing to do is. He's trying to do his best by Piers, but he didn't plan on any of this.

Max is a scientist. On top of that, he's always known his soulmate was a man. He didn't figure he'd ever wind up with an unexpected kid.

He hasn't had time to think about his soulmate for a long time. His dreams have always been unhelpful and vague — wisps of coloured mist, wet sand beneath his feet, strong arms around him. Some people get helpful soulmate dreams — nobody gets a face, but some people get a voice or eyes or something noticeable. Not Max.

He wonders what Piers dreams of.

…

Piers is eight years old when he meets a little boy who says his name is Dudley.

The first thing Dudley asks him is why his back looks like that.

Piers has been taught how to answer this. "I was born with my bones all wrong," he says.

"Oh," Dudley says. "Does it hurt?"

Piers shrugs. "Sometimes, if you push on it."

Because pressure compresses the fragile, flexible bones of his wings, crushes them into the skin of his back, leaves him feeling swollen and inflamed and raw.

He hates them. He doesn't want them.

Max tells him he's special but Piers doesn't want to be special. Piers just wants to be able to talk to the other kids. He wants them not to stare at him when he walks by.

"Can I touch it?"

"Uh," Piers says. "No?"

"Can we claim it happened because a witch cursed you and make everyone terrified of you?"

"Uh," Piers says. "Sure?"

Dudley grins. "Cool."

And somehow that's that.

…

Piers has never had a friend like Dudley before.

Piers isn't sure he's ever had a  _friend_  before. He's got Max, but Max is like his dad. Piers tells people that Max  _is_  his dad.

He's got his soulmate, in his dreams. He dreams of the smell of cigarette smoke and a strong hand gripping his and a boy who laughs like the sun. But that doesn't count either, because his soulmate is still just in his dreams.

Dudley is here and real and somehow he's decided that Piers is something wonderful. He tells all his friends that Piers was cursed and he laughs somewhat meanly as they all run away. But then he turns to Piers and he asks if Piers wants to share an ice cream, and after that they're friends.

It's Dudley that makes Piers want to go to school.

He's so tired of being alone.

When he tells Max this, Max looks at him with sad eyes, takes a deep breath, and says, "I'll work on it."

…

Piers starts school the next September. The first day, a kid tries to laugh at him because of how he looks and Dudley punches him in the face.

Piers doesn't know why Dudley has decided that they're friends. Dudley doesn't like many people. He laughs at most of them, especially those that are different.

But Dudley has never laughed at Piers.

Piers tries not to question it.

…

He gets home from his first day and pulls off the high-tech sweat-wicking fancy wrap Max had a friend design for him. It kept the head down, but there's still sweat trapped between ruffled feathers. His skin is red and puffy, more swollen than it's ever been.

Max looks at him and sighs heavily.

"Please," Piers says. "Please let me do this."

"Piers, man, if you keep this up… it may damage them permanently."

"Who cares?" Piers says angrily. "They're stupid. It's not like they're ever going to work anyway, and even if they did I couldn't fly because people would  _see me_!"

He turns away so that he doesn't have to see the pity in Max's eyes. He slams the door to his bedroom.

…

Max knows something has to give.

Piers is, despite his formative years, a very social eight-year-old. He wants to have friends. He wants to be normal.

But he's not.

There's not a surgeon in the world who could remove his wings and let him live.

Max sorts through his finances, stretched a bit thin since he adopted a kid and lost the chance to work in his field.

He's been picking up work as a pharmacy tech and it's been enough to support them but it means he doesn't really have the savings he'd like.

So he gets a loan and a timeshare in the middle of goddamn nowhere — a log cabin so far in the wilds of Scotland a car can't even reach it. The rent's not much, but the transport takes a while.

He calls in a few favours and gets a better design for the binding, trying for something that flexes and breathes with PIers.

And the first long weekend of the school year, he takes Piers up to the cabin and watches him stretch his wings outside their tiny suburban home for the first time.

…

At first, Piers can just glide.

At first, that's enough. The wind in his face, the way the world looks above the treetops, it's all so exhilarating.

But he wants more.

He takes up running. He flexes and stretches and flaps his wings when he's alone in his room. He learns not to leave loose papers on his desk.

And he learns to  _fly_.

Piers is nine years old and he can  _fly_. It almost makes everything else worth it.

…

When he dreams of his soulmate, he dreams of blue eyes. He dreams of solid weight keeping him safe. He dreams of a hand gripping his tightly.

He dreams of a boy with a laugh like sunshine.

…

The new binding breathes enough that Piers' back doesn't swell so much under the heat. He grooms his feathers carefully each morning before he tucks them away. There are still places that are calloused with scar tissue from being rubbed raw too many times, His spine curves at an angle that Max eyes with worried eyes when he gets a good look at it.

But maybe the wings aren't all bad. Maybe this is sustainable.

…

So he goes to school and he comes home and lets his wings free and they spend all the time they can at the cabin, where Piers can take flight and leave it all behind.

…

Piers is thirteen when he realizes that Dudley is his soulmate.

He slips in the snow in January and lands hard on his back. He feels the bones of his wings dig into his back, bruising in various places. He winces, bites his lip, tries to keep in a scream.

"You alright?" Dudley asks, holding out a hand to help him up.

Piers takes it.

Dudley's grip is firm, his hand strong and calloused. He hauls Piers up easily, and he meets PIers's eyes with his own — a familiar blue.

And suddenly it all clicks into place.

Piers wonders how they're supposed to be soulmates if he can't even tell Dudley the truth about himself.

He can't tell anyone the truth.

…

Max has been waiting for this.

He's not an idiot, and he's always been decent at reading people.

He's seen the way Piers has been chafing lately.

He's a teenage boy with a high metabolism and a lot of pent up energy, but he can't go out for sports because nobody will take a boy with a hunchback.

Dudley is… mostly good for him. Dudley gives him an outlet, someone outside of Max, and he  _needs_  that.

But Dudley Dursley is not the outlet Max would've chosen for Piers.

Dudley is a cruel, spoiled child with very little empathy. Max doesn't have a clue how Dudley decided Piers was to be protected. He's glad for it, but he doesn't understand it.

Dudley teaches Piers how to throw a punch. He breaks into his parents' liquor cabinet and gives Piers his first taste of alcohol. He gives him his first cigarette, too. Piers hates them, but Dudley picks up the habit.

Piers is a kind-hearted boy but the world has given him a lot of reasons to be angry. Dudley does nothing to tamper than anger.

And Piers is a teenager. Max remembers being a teenager.

So Piers gets a bit sullen and a bit snappish and a bit scowly, but Max just figures it's a part of life.

So he's kind of expecting this, too.

"I hate you!" Piers screams. "You do nothing but keep me trapped in this stupid house in these stupid bandages! Nobody is coming after us, Max. Nobody cares. You're just paranoid!"

It's so hard not to yell back.

He's not even sure what sparked this off. He didn't think today was any different than any other day, but then suddenly Piers was screaming.

"You don't get to blame me," he says calmly.

"Why, because you  _saved me_?" Piers sneers. "Maybe I would've been better off there, instead of caged like this!"

It feels like Piers has stuck a dagger in his heart and twisted it sharply. Max remembers a boy curled up in the corner of a barren room, staring at the wall.

There is no world where that would've been better than this.

But it still hurts, because he's tried his hardest to do his best by Piers. To make the best of this fucked up situation they've been stuck in.

Max has put his whole life on hold. He's thirty-eight and he still hasn't met his soulmate, hasn't even had a date in ages.

He doesn't resent Piers. He doesn't resent the life that he has. He does not, for one second, regret saving him from a life of being subject 721.

But he does wonder what things would be like if he'd never taken that job. Especially at times like this.

"Take a breath," Max says.

"Don't tell me what to do!" Piers throws at him. And then Piers stomps off. His bedroom door slams. Max sinks down on the couch and drops his head into his hands.

…

When Max wakes up the next morning, Piers is baking cookies.

"Apology cookies," he says. "Like… "sorry I was a dick" cookies."

Max grins. Piers is a good kid, deep down. "The best kind of cookies," he says, ruffling the kid's hair. Piers scowls at him, but it's masking a smile.

…

"I want to tell Dudley," Piers says when he's fifteen. Max can't say he didn't see it coming.

"Piers," he says slowly.

"No, listen," Piers says. "Dudley won't tell anyone. I know he won't — he knows people would just call him crazy. And no one we're hiding from would be listening to him anyway."

He's probably not wrong, is the thing. But the more people who know, the easier it can get away from them.

They haven't kept themselves safe for eleven years by playing it risky.

But Piers is lonely. Max can see it when Piers thinks he isn't looking.

"He's my soulmate," Piers admits, his voice low.

Now that, Max wasn't expecting.

"You sure?" he asks.

Piers smiles. It's warm, and it's softer than anything Max has ever seen on his face. "I'm sure," Piers says.

"Do you think he knows?"

Piers shifts his gaze down low. "I don't think so," he says.

And Max sighs.

Soulmates are not a guarantee of forever, but they do make it a pretty good bet. Dudley's going to be a part of Piers' life for a long time to come.

"Okay," he says.

…

Deciding to tell Dudley and  _actually telling Dudley_  are two very different things.

Piers is very aware that just saying the sentence "I have wings" makes him sound utterly insane.

So instead he invites Dudley up to the cabin.

"There's something I need you to see and I need you to not freak out," he says.

"Why would I freak out?" Dudley asks, and then, "Why are you taking off your shirt?"

Piers doesn't answer, just strips off the binder too and lets his wings unfurl, stretching the bones and muscles out carefully. Every time he does this, he thinks of Max telling him that if he wears it too long, his wings will be permanently disfigured.

He knows this cabin is the only thing keeping that from happening.

His full wingspan is now nearly thirty feet — over five times his height, because Piers has never been tall. His wings are still the same jet black colour they started, and they contrast sharply against the tanned skin of his torso.

Max says humans have a thing about winged people. They always have. It's why there are so many stories — angels, Icarus, the winged gods of the Mesopotamian stories. Winged people have been a part of the mythos as longs as there have been humans.

But they've always been a myth. Until Piers.

But it means there's a power in the image of him standing there, wings spread wide. Dudley's never been religious, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know the imagery.

Piers wishes he could tell what Dudley was thinking.

"Dudley?" he asks carefully.

"You're not a… you don't have magic, do you?"

Piers furrows his brows. That was not the question he was expecting.

"Uh, no? I… uh. My parents sold me to science when I was a baby."

"Oh," Dudley says, looking… relieved? Piers is very confused. "Good," Dudley adds. "That's good."

Piers raises an eyebrow, and Dudley backpedals. "Uh. Not the… not being sold to science. The… well. Magic is kinda shit," Dudley says.

"Dudley?" Piers is a little concerned about  _Dudley's_  sanity, which is kind of… the opposite of how he figured this would go. "You know… magic isn't real, right?"

"Sure," Dudley says distractedly. It's not convincing.

"You wanna try that again?" Piers asks, but suddenly Dudley's eyes are lighting up.

" _Oh_ ," he says. " _That's why I always dream about flying._ "

Ah. Well. Piers is not… entirely surprised that they're going to have the soulmates talk and the wings talk all at once.

He grins sheepishly. "Yeah, sorry. That's on me."

"Wait, you knew?" Dudley asks.

Piers shrugs. "I got your eyes. It wasn't hard. What did you get?"

"Clouds. Wind. A  _lot_  of flying. Couple feathers."

"You're not gonna freak out about this?" Piers asks. He's still waiting for it to sink in. Waiting for Dudley to panic. Maybe about the wings. Maybe about them being soulmates. Dudley's never had a boyfriend. Then again, Dudley's never really had a girlfriend, either. He's snogged a few girls here and there, but he never seemed super interested.

"Can I still tell people you were cursed?"

Dudley has long since moved from telling people he was cursed by a witch to "cursed by an evil spirit", mostly for the impact, Piers assumes.

"Sure," Piers says with a grin.

"Can I touch them?"

Piers laughs, thinking about their first meeting, almost an inverse of this one.

"Sure," he says.

So Dudley runs his hand through Piers' dark feathers and watches him lift off and soar, and he never shows the fear that Piers expected.

"Are you okay with… the soulmates thing?" Piers asks when he lands.

Because, honestly, Piers didn't expect Dudley to be  _angry_  about the wings. Shocked, yes, but not angry. Because he's always been weird about Piers.

But Piers has seen Dudley give kids swirlies and shove them into lockers for being gay and out and proud.

Piers asked him not to, and so Dudley stopped when he was around, but Piers is pretty sure it hasn't actually  _stopped_.

Dudley just shrugs. "I mean. Best friends forever, right?" Dudley says.

Piers doesn't realize he's disappointed until he hears the "Oh," escape his mouth, small and broken sounding.

They're  _soulmates_. And sure, maybe for some people that means a best friend, but Piers always figured… well. He doesn't know what he expected, exactly. For Dudley to get over his homophobia and walk hand in hand down the aisle with him someday?

As he feels his heart break, Piers realizes that maybe he didn't expect that, but maybe he  _wanted_  it.

…

Dudley swears never to tell anyone.

Dudley swears he  _doesn't_  tell anyone.

And maybe he's telling the truth.

But then Dudley turns seventeen and a month later he  _disappears_ , just vanishes into the darkness and somehow Piers and Max seem to be the only ones who remember that the Dursleys ever lived at 4 Privet Drive.

Piers doesn't understand.

He attends his final year of school alone.

And then, just before he's set to graduate, when Piers has just turned seventeen years old (based on the birthday that Max gave him, because there wasn't one in his file), four men with very large guns burst into their house.

Piers is in his room, but Max is out in the living room.

Piers hears the bang, and then a strange voice yells, "Where is the kid?"

And Max hesitates, and then he screams, "Piers,  _run!_ "

And then a gunshot sounds, and Max screams.

Piers isn't wearing his binder. Piers isn't even wearing  _pants_.

He hesitates, torn between following Max's instructions and seeing if Max is okay. He hesitates too long.

His door slams open with a bang, and there are two men staring down the sights of their guns at him.

Piers has never seen a gun in real life.

He freezes up, and one of the men tackles him, and then the world goes dark.

Piers wakes up strapped to a cold table on his stomach, wings pulled to their full length and pinned painfully. He aches all over. His head is strapped down so that he can only look to his left. He can barely move his toes, let alone any of the rest of him.

He's still only wearing his damn boxers.

He must make some noise because there's a rustle behind him and then a man with a clipboard is standing in his line of sight.

"Subject 721," he says, and Piers goes cold.

He's never forgotten that number.

He doesn't remember much from before Max took him — just vague impressions of a pure white room, lots of white coats, and lots of harsh voices. They told him things wouldn't hurt but they lied, they always lied.

Max had promised him that no one would ever reduce him to a number ever again.

_Max_. Piers remembers the sound of gunfire, the sound of Max screaming.

Max isn't his dad, but he might as well have been. He's the closest Piers has ever had, since his real parents sold him and never looked back.

"Max?" he asks the man. His voice is raspy, his throat dry. He wonders how long he's been out.

The man grins in a way that is not at all reassuring and doesn't answer.

Piers sinks down into the table. He has lost all faith.

He heard Max go down. Dudley has been missing for more than nine months. No one else has ever cared about Piers Polkiss.

No one is coming to save him.

…

They draw his blood. They pluck some of his feathers — ones that aren't ready to moult, and it hurts like a  _bitch_. They keep him awake for three days straight, dumping buckets of water on him when he looks like he's going to sleep. He can only mark the days because of their coming and going.

They inject him with something that they tell him will put him to sleep but prevent him from dreaming. They won't even let him have hope in his dreams.

They stuff a feeding tube down his throat and give him some kind of nutrient slurry. He hasn't moved in eight days. Everything hurts.

They take more feathers. Primaries, secondaries, even the downy layer nearest to his spine. They stick a giant needle in his spine and take something there, too. That's not a fun time.

Piers gives up.

He can't move.

He can't plot an escape if he can't move.

Besides, Max is probably dead. Dudley is long gone. What reason does he even have to escape?

By the twelfth day — or maybe the thirteenth? Piers lost track — the world looks a little hazy around the edges.

He thinks they must forget to dose him, because he sees Dudley's smile — not the sunshine one, but something soft and sad around the edges. But he can see Dudley's face, too, so maybe this isn't a dream. Maybe it's a hallucination.

Hallucination-Dudley feels very reals, his fingers calloused but oh so gentle on Piers' wrist.

"It's okay," he says. "It's okay. I've got you."

"Dudley," says a voice, half familiar and half forgotten. "We've got to go. You need a hand?"

He sees Dudley look at the cuffs that pin him, metal and restrictive, and then nod.

It's a weird hallucination.

But then Dudley's cousin Harry is there, and why is he in Piers' hallucination? Piers hasn't thought about Harry in years. But Harry is raising a stick and muttering a word in a language Piers doesn't know and then the cuffs lift away and Piers wants to move but he can't, he  _can't_  because he tries and his muscles scream out.

"Hey, hey, easy," Dudley says, and his tone is brusque but his words are gentle.

"Do you need me to—" Harry says, but Dudley interrupts. "No, no, I've got him."

Dudley scoops him up, as gently as he can, and Piers is starting to wonder if maybe this isn't a hallucination at all. He whimpers because his body hasn't been moved in so long and it's creaking, every bend of limb crying out in pain.

"I'm sorry," Dudley whispers. "I'm sorry, but we've got to get you out of here."

"Max?" Piers asks, because some part of him is still desperately hoping that Max is alive.

"Hermione's got him," Harry says. "She's good with healing. He'll be fine."

Something in Piers breaks apart at that, and this had better not be a hallucination, because he is crying with relief, and if this is torn away, he may not survive it.

Dudley cradles him a little tighter to his chest and says, "It's gonna be okay," and then starts moving quickly through sterile halls.

They leave the building and meet up with two other people — a redheaded, very tall man and a woman with a riot of brown curls. The redhead is supporting a pale but softly smiling Max.

Piers' face cracks into a smile.

Max's shatters completely.

"Piers," he says. "Piers, oh my god. I'm so… I never meant for this to ever happen to you again. I'm so sorry."

"Not your fault," Piers croaks. Max turns to the girl, his face desperate.

"Can you fix him? Like you did me?"

She nods. "But we really should get out of here, first."

"Dudley," Harry says. "I can't take you both at once. You're going to have to let Ron take him."

Piers feels like a goddamn damsel in distress and he hates it, hates being such a deadweight in his own rescue, but his muscles are still viciously screaming at him.

Dudley clutches him tighter for just an instant and stares the man down.

And then the woman takes Max's shoulder and disappears, and then Piers is being lifted by the redhead and he's being squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and suddenly they're somewhere else.

And then Dudley is there and taking him back and laying him gently on a couch Piers doesn't recognize, pushing his hair out of his face. "Piers," Dudley says, and his voice is softer than it's ever been.

The woman pushes forward, a stick in her hand. "Let me," she says. Dudley recoils, but at the same time, Max and Harry say, "It's okay."

"She fixed me," Max says. "Healed a damn bullet hole in my side."

"Hermione's a great healer," Harry says. "And I swear to god she won't give him a tail."

_Was that a concern?_  Piers wonders. Also,  _what the hell is even happening?_ How delirious is he?

But then she waves the stick, and the bone-deep aches in Piers' body seem to melt away. He sighs in relief. The woman steps back, and then Dudley and Max are both at his side, staring at him in concern.

"Thanks for being my knight in fucking armour," Piers croaks. "Now is someone going to explain what the hell is going on?"

Dudley rubs the back of his neck sheepishly and then looks at Harry.

Harry shrugs. "He's your soulmate, right? Fucking close enough, if you ask me."

The woman — Hermione — rolls her eyes, but she just sighs, and Dudley turns back to Piers.

"So my cousin is a wizard," Dudley says. Harry waves awkwardly. Piers and Max blink at Dudley.

Piers wants to say that's impossible, but, well. He has fucking wings, so.

"How did you even know I was gone?" he asks instead.

Dudley shrugs. "I came home and the first thing I did was check your apartment. There was a bloodstain and not a sign of life. So… I called Harry."

Piers smiles tiredly. "Well, thanks," he says, and then he blinks heavily.

"There's a bed in the back room," Hermione says, and Dudley scoops him up.

"Hey!" Piers says. "I can walk now!"

Dudley shrugs. "Maybe I just like showing off my muscles," he says. Piers wants to protest again, but by then they've already reached the bed and it's not worth it.

Dudley hovers awkwardly, and Piers sighs.

"You can stay, if you want," he says.

Dudley looks like that was the offer he was waiting for.

He moves forward and takes the other side of the bed. Piers lazily lifts a wing, and Dudley slides right underneath it. Piers is on his stomach, wings sprawled out to either side.

He wants to ask Dudley why he seems so different, but he slips off to sleep before he gets the chance.

…

Harry and Hermione and Ron are all wizards, apparently. And apparently, wizards can make Piers and Max virtually untraceable.

Piers officially loves magic.

…

It takes him almost a week to corner Dudley for a discussion, even when they're all still in the same tiny flat. Max is looking for a new place for them to stay. Maybe New Zealand, this time. There isn't much holding them here.

"You wanna explain where you went?" he asks.

Dudley looks down at his lap. "I was… Harry was in a war. They were worried we might be targets."

Well. As excuses go, that's a pretty good one.

"Okay," Piers says. "You get a pass on the leaving. Now you wanna explain this?" he holds up their hands, which are intertwined, because Dudley took his hand as soon as he sat down. He's been doing that.

Dudley flushes bright red, tries to take his hand back. Piers doesn't let him, gripping tightly.

"Ah, I didn't say it was a bad thing," he says.

Dudley rubs the back of his neck with his free hand, and then seems to decide to go for broke. He meets Piers' eyes.

"I know what it's like to live without you. And to think I've lost you." He sighs. "I was an idiot. And I knew I was being an idiot before I even left, but I just… wasn't ready to admit that. And then I was gone, and I had a lot of time to think. About what I want."

"What do you want?" Piers asks softly. He thinks he might know the answer, but he needs to hear it.

"You," Dudley says. "However… you'll have me."

And Piers can't help but lean forward and kiss him.

…

Even better than the untraceable spell?

Hermione takes one look at Piers' binder and decides it just won't do.

So she plays around with a few spells for a few days, and eventually she hands Piers a small stone on a rope.

"Here," she says.

Piers stares at it. He's not sure how to tell her that he's not really a  _necklace_  kind of guy, even if it is just a piece of black rope.

"Just…" she sighs in frustration. "Just put it on."

He doesn't want to anger the scary lady with the magical powers, so he does as she says.

And as soon as he puts it on, a cool tingling sensation spreads from his back. He turns back, and he can't see his wings.

He turns back to her in shock. She looks smug.

"Modified disillusionment charm," she says. "The tricky part was linking it to the object, since you're a Muggle and can't actually activate it yourself."

He stares at her.

"You can just cut holes in your shirts," she continues. "The charm will essentially hide the holes as well."

"Thank you," he whispers, cutting her off as she's about to say something else. " _Thank you_ ," he repeats emphatically.

_No more binding_. No more squashing his wings into his back, no more scars, no more feather prints.

She blushes. "You'll have to keep them tucked and be careful, of course," she says. "They're still material. You can't hit people with them. But… you're welcome."

…

They move to New Zealand. Max and Piers and Dudley. They start over.

Piers learns to keep his wings tucked tight and he thanks God for Hermione almost every day.

Max gets a new job. Dudley and Piers wind up going to Uni after all. Piers goes to law school. Dudley gets a job at a transportation business.

Piers falls in love. He dreams about blue eyes, and wakes up to see them staring back at him.

And eventually, they do walk down the aisle together.

Max cries through the whole ceremony.


End file.
